W3 Total Cache vs The Off Switch (formerly WP Avoid Slow)

W3 Total Cache (W3TC) improves the SEO, Core Web Vitals and overall user experience of your site by increasing website performance and reducing load times by leveraging features like content delivery network (CDN) integration and the latest best practices. W3TC is the only web host agnostic Web Performance Optimization (WPO) framework for WordPress trusted by millions of publishers, web developers, and web hosts worldwide for more than a decade. It is the total performance solution for optimizing WordPress Websites. BENEFITS Improvements in search engine result page rankings, especially for mobile-friendly websites and sites that use SSL At least 10x improvement in overall site performance (Grade A in WebPagetest or significant Google PageSpeed improvements) when fully configured Improved conversion rates and “site performance” which affect your site’s rank on Google.com “Instant” repeat page views: browser caching Optimized progressive render: pages start rendering quickly and can be interacted with more quickly Reduced page load time: increased visitor time on site; visitors view more pages Improved web server performance; sustain high traffic periods Up to 80% bandwidth savings when you minify HTML, minify CSS and minify JS files. KEY FEATURES Compatible with shared hosting, virtual private / dedicated servers and dedicated servers / clusters Transparent content delivery network (CDN) management with Media Library, theme files and WordPress itself Mobile support: respective caching of pages by referrer or groups of user agents including theme switching for groups of referrers or user agents Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) support Secure Socket Layer (SSL/TLS) support Caching of (minified and compressed) pages and posts in memory or on disk or on (FSD) CDN (by user agent group) Caching of (minified and compressed) CSS and JavaScript in memory, on disk or on CDN Caching of feeds (site, categories, tags, comments, search results) in memory or on disk or on CDN Caching of search results pages (i.e., URIs with query string variables) in memory or on disk Caching of database objects in memory or on disk Caching of objects in memory or on disk Caching of fragments in memory or on disk Caching methods include local Disk, Redis, Memcached, APC, APCu, eAccelerator, XCache, and WinCache Minify CSS, Minify JavaScript and Minify HTML with granular control Minification of posts and pages and RSS feeds Minification of inline, embedded or 3rd party JavaScript with automated updates to assets Minification of inline, embedded or 3rd party CSS with automated updates to assets Defer non-critical CSS and JavaScript for rendering pages faster than ever before Defer offscreen images using Lazy Load to improve the user experience Browser caching using cache-control, future expire headers and entity tags (ETag) with “cache-busting” JavaScript grouping by template (home page, post page etc) with embed location control Non-blocking JavaScript embedding Import post attachments directly into the Media Library (and CDN) Leverage our multiple CDN integrations to optimize images WP-CLI support for cache purging, query string updating and more Various security features to help ensure website safety Caching statistics for performance insights of any enabled feature Extension framework for customization or extensibility for Cloudflare, WPML and much more Reverse proxy integration via Nginx or Varnish Image Converter extension provides modern image format conversion (e.g., WebP, AVIF) from common image formats (on upload and on demand) W3 Total Cache Pro Features With over a million active installs, W3 Total Cache is the most comprehensive WordPress caching plugin available and has robust premium features that help deliver an exceptional user experience. Full Site Delivery: Serve your entire site from a Content Delivery Network (CDN), ensuring faster load times worldwide. Fragment Cache: Optimize the caching of dynamic content while still improving performance. REST API Caching: Speed up your headless WordPress site by caching REST API calls. Eliminate Render-Blocking CSS: Ensure your CSS doesn’t hold up page loading, providing faster initial paint. Delay Scripts: Improve performance by delaying the loading of non-essential scripts until they are needed. Preload Requests: Boost page performance by preloading critical resources before they’re requested. Remove CSS/JS: Clean up unnecessary CSS and JavaScript files that slow down your pages. Lazy Load Google Maps: Load Google Maps only when it’s visible, reducing unnecessary requests. WPML Extension: Optimize performance on multilingual sites powered by WPML. Caching Statistics: Get detailed insights on cache usage and performance improvements. Purge Logs: Keep your site clean by automatically purging unnecessary cache logs. 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee Try W3 Total Cache Pro risk-free with our 30-day money-back guarantee. If you’re not satisfied, we will refund your purchase. PAGESPEED SCORE IMPROVEMENTS To help you understand the impact of individual features on your website’s performance, we’ve tested each feature separately to see its effect on Google PageSpeed scores. While optimal results come from configuring several different caching tools together, the following individual features also show significant improvements on their own: Remove Unused CSS/JS This feature removes CSS and JavaScript files that are not needed for the current page, reducing the load time. Added over 27 points to the Google PageSpeed score (Before: 57.2 / After: 86.7) Reduced the Potential Savings From Unused JavaScript from 127.5 KiB to 84 KiB View the test results Full Site Delivery Full Site Delivery optimizes the delivery of your entire site, enhancing the server response time. Added a 99% performance enhancement to the Average Server Response Time (Before: 3413 ms / After: 34 ms) View the test results Eliminate Render Blocking CSS This feature eliminates CSS that blocks the rendering of your page, speeding up the initial load time. Added over 17 points to the Google PageSpeed score (Before: 53.75 / After: 71) Reduced the Potential Savings From Render-Blocking Resources by over 94% (Before: 2432.5 ms / After: 125 ms) Improved the Largest Contentful Paint time by over 56% (Before: 7s / After: 3.04s) View the test results Delay Scripts Delay Scripts postpones the loading of certain scripts until they are needed, reducing initial load times. Added 14 points to the Google PageSpeed Performance score (Before: 54.25 / After: 68.5) Reduced the Time Third-Party Code Blocked The Main Thread For by 62% (Before: 825 ms / After: 197.5 ms) View the test results Rest API Caching This feature caches API responses, reducing server load and speeding up API interactions. Reduced the Average Server Load by 40% (Before: 0.62 / After: 0.37) Sped up API Responses by 84.5% (Before: 968ms / After: 150ms) Reduced the Average Server Load by 24% under during a major traffic spike (Before: 34.55 / After: 26.19) View the test results Modern Image Formats Converts images to modern formats like WebP or AVIF, which are more efficient and faster to load. Added over 9 points to the Google PageSpeed score (Before: 84.67 / After: 93.83) View the test results Lazy Load Google Maps Delays the loading of Google Maps until the user interacts with them, reducing initial load time. Added 10 points to the Google PageSpeed score (Before: 66 / After: 76) Reduced the Total Blocking Time Performance score by 72% (Before: 287.5 ms / After: 80 ms) View the test results Speed up your site tremendously, improve core web vitals and the overall user experience for your visitors without having to change your WordPress host, theme, plugins or your content production workflow. What users have to say: Read testimonials from W3TC users. Who do I thank for all of this? It’s quite difficult to recall all of the innovators that have shared their thoughts, code and experiences in the blogosphere over the years, but here are some names to get you started: Steve Souders Steve Clay Ryan Grove Nicholas Zakas Ryan Dean Andrei Zmievski George Schlossnagle Daniel Cowgill Rasmus Lerdorf Gopal Vijayaraghavan Bart Vanbraban mOo [villu164] (https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/researchers/villu164) Please reach out to all of these people and support their projects if you’re so inclined.

WordPress prioritises backwards compatibility. That’s a feature. It also means every install ships with things you didn’t ask for. An emoji CDN script. An oEmbed script. A Windows Live Writer manifest (discontinued 2017). Dashicons loaded for logged-out visitors. Heartbeat polling every 15 seconds. A version tag that tells the world exactly which WordPress you’re running. None of these are bugs. They’re just not needed on most sites. Disable what you don’t need. Keep what you do. The Off Switch lets you disable each one, individually. One screen, every switch A live counter shows how many switches are on. A sticky bar keeps Save, the filter, and state chips (All / On / Off / Changed / New) in reach while you scroll. Changed switches are highlighted until you save, and an “unsaved changes” pill shows exactly what you’ve flipped before you commit. Jump between sections with live per-section counts, or copy a WP-CLI command that replicates your whole configuration on another site. Every switch card states what it removes, what it saves, and what to watch out for. All 104 switches were functionally verified against a live WordPress 7.0 install for this release. Bloat Remover Emoji script – ~15 KB + 1 HTTP request. Browsers handle emoji natively. Embed script – ~4 KB + oEmbed discovery links in . RSD link – Really Simple Discovery. Only needed for legacy XML-RPC clients. WLW manifest – Windows Live Writer has been discontinued since 2017. WordPress 6.3 removed this link from core — the switch matters on WordPress 6.2 and older. WP version tag – Stops advertising your WordPress version to the world. Shortlink – Removes from and HTTP headers. Search engines ignore it. Asset query strings – Strips ?ver= from scripts, styles, and WP 6.5+ Script Modules so CDNs and proxies cache correctly. XML-RPC – Closes a common brute-force attack vector. XML-RPC Kill Requests – Goes further than disabling: hard-kills any incoming xmlrpc.php request with a 403 before WordPress loads at all. Heartbeat API – Reduces admin polling from every 15 s to every 60 s. Dashicons (frontend) – ~35 KB (CSS + font) saved for every logged-out visitor. REST API Discovery Link – Removes from . Safe to remove on standard sites. RSS Feed Links – Removes feed autodiscovery tags from . Modern browsers no longer act on them. Leave enabled if you publish an RSS feed. Speculation Rules (WP 6.8+) – Disables the WP 6.8+ Speculation Rules API that prefetches links before users click. Can inflate analytics, increase server bandwidth, and trigger consent flows on unfetched pages. Disable All Feeds – Redirects all RSS and Atom feed URLs to the homepage. For sites with no RSS subscribers. Comment Auto-Links – Stops WordPress from converting plain-text URLs in comments into clickable links. Editor Autosave – Deregisters the autosave script that POSTs editor content to the server every 60 seconds. For teams that prefer explicit saves. DNS Prefetch – Removes all hints from . Redundant when Emojis and Embeds are already disabled. Recent Comments Inline CSS – WordPress outputs a small inline block in whenever the Recent Comments widget is active. Remove it if your theme already styles the widget. Script & Style Control jQuery Migrate – ~30 KB. Modern themes don’t need it. Block Library CSS – ~7 KB loaded on every page, even with no Gutenberg blocks. Global Styles (theme.json CSS) – 10-50 KB inline CSS from block themes. SVG Duotone Filters – Hidden SVG blob injected on every page, even with no duotone images. WordPress 6.3 made duotone output on-demand — the switch matters on WordPress 6.2 and older. Script/Style type attributes – type="text/javascript" and type="text/css" are redundant in HTML5. Defer non-critical JavaScript – Adds defer so scripts don’t block HTML parsing. jQuery is never deferred. Move scripts to footer – Relocates enqueued scripts from to just before . jQuery is never moved. Template Output Buffering (WP 7.0) – Since WordPress 7.0, classic themes get every frontend page buffered in memory in full and re-parsed before a single byte reaches the visitor, so late-printed block styles can be hoisted into . Turning the buffer off restores streamed output for faster TTFB and lower peak memory. Block themes are unaffected. WordPress Behaviour Tweaks Self-pingbacks – WordPress pings your own posts when you link between them – a wasted HTTP request that creates an unwanted comment on the target post. Capital P filter – WordPress corrects “WordPress” to “WordPress” on every rendered string. Remove if you don’t need the autocorrect. Limit post revisions – WordPress stores unlimited revisions per post. Caps revisions at 3 to prevent silent database growth on active editorial sites. Attachment pages – WordPress creates a full template page for every uploaded file. These waste crawl budget on most sites. Sends a 301 redirect to the parent post instead. Comments – Closes all comments and pingbacks site-wide, hides existing comments on the frontend, and removes comment-related UI from wp-admin (Comments menu, admin bar node, dashboard widget). Enable only if your site does not use comments. Search – Redirects all WordPress search queries (/?s=) to the homepage with a 301, preventing bots from triggering repeated database queries. Also removes search forms rendered via get_search_form(). Hardcoded forms in theme templates are not affected. oEmbed Provider – WordPress registers a REST endpoint at /wp-json/oembed/1.0/embed so other sites can embed your content via the oEmbed protocol. Remove it if you don’t want your content embeddable externally. Does not affect your ability to embed others’ content. Post via Email – Removes the Post via Email configuration from Writing Settings and disables the feature. Almost no modern site uses email-to-post. Update Services (Ping-o-Matic) – Removes Update Services from Writing Settings and stops outbound pings to weblog ping services on every published post. Native XML Sitemap (WP 5.5+) – Disables WordPress’s built-in XML sitemap generator. Most sites use external SEO plugins (Yoast, Rank Math) for sitemaps instead. Removes unnecessary redirects and reduces crawl overhead (default OFF). oEmbed Auto-Embed – Disables WordPress from regex-scanning post content for [embed] shortcodes and oEmbed patterns on every frontend page load. For sites that do not embed external content, removing this filter saves processing overhead (default OFF). Database & Query Expired Transients – Schedules a daily cleanup of expired transient rows in wp_options. Useful on low-traffic sites where WP-Cron can go days without firing. Abandoned Auto-Drafts – WordPress creates an auto-draft every time the post editor opens. Abandoned sessions leave these rows permanently. Runs a daily sweep to delete auto-drafts older than 30 days. Skip Row Count on Singles – On every single post or page, MySQL runs SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS to count total matching rows – a full index scan only needed for paginated archives. Removes that sub-query on all singular views. Adjacent Post Links – Older WordPress queries the previous and next post on every single post page to output in — two extra DB queries per page load. Google dropped support for these hints in 2019, and modern WordPress no longer outputs them; the switch matters on older installs. Reduce Trash Retention – WordPress keeps trashed items for 30 days before permanent deletion. A daily sweep permanently deletes posts and comments trashed more than 7 days ago, keeping wp_posts leaner on active editorial sites without affecting normal recovery workflows. Image Performance Google Fonts display:swap – Without font-display:swap, the browser hides text while your Google Font downloads (FOIT). Adds display=swap to every Google Fonts URL so visitors see text immediately. Add missing image dimensions – Images without width and height attributes cause layout shifts (CLS). Reads dimensions from attachment metadata and injects them automatically. LCP image priority – Adds fetchpriority="high" to the first content image so the browser loads it before lower-priority resources. Adds fetchpriority="low" and decoding="async" to all others. Lazy load images – Adds loading="lazy" to images below the fold. The first image is never lazy-loaded – it is the LCP candidate and must load immediately. Disable PDF thumbnails – WordPress generates thumbnail previews for every uploaded PDF when ImageMagick is available. Rarely used on the frontend; adds significant upload processing time. Disable scaled images – WordPress 5.3+ creates a downsized -scaled copy of any image whose longest side exceeds 2560 px on upload. On most sites this extra file is never served. Disabling it stores the original as-uploaded. Applies to new uploads only. Disable extra image sizes – WordPress 5.3 added 1536×1536 and 2048×2048 intermediate sizes to every image upload. These oversized copies are rarely requested and waste disk space. Theme and plugin image sizes are not affected. Applies to new uploads only. Security & Admin Hardening Block User Enumeration – WordPress redirects ?author=1 to /author/username/, exposing registered usernames. Intercepts those requests and redirects to the homepage before the username is revealed. Disable Author Archives – Redirects all /author/username/ pages to the homepage. For sites with no author profile pages. Disable File Editor – Defines DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT to remove the plugin and theme code editor from wp-admin. Eliminates a code-injection surface a compromised admin account could exploit. Disable Application Passwords – Removes the Application Passwords UI and stops all tokens from being accepted. For sites that don’t use REST API or XML-RPC integrations. Suppress Admin Email Check – Disables the periodic full-screen prompt asking admins to confirm their email address. One less interruption, no functional change. Remove X-Pingback Header – Strips X-Pingback: from every HTTP response, stopping the site from advertising its XML-RPC endpoint URL to scanners. Clean Admin Bar – Removes the WordPress logo dropdown, the duplicate “Visit Site” link, and the admin bar search for a less cluttered editing environment. Hide Update Nag for Non-Admins – Hides the core update notice from editors and contributors who cannot action it. Administrators still see it normally. Restrict REST API to Logged-In Users – The REST API is publicly accessible by default, allowing unauthenticated enumeration of posts, users, and other data. Restricting access to authenticated users reduces the attack surface. Will break public REST consumers such as headless frontends. Redirect Unauthenticated Admin Access – By default, visiting /wp-admin/ without being logged in redirects to the login page, confirming a WordPress admin area exists. This redirects unauthenticated requests to the homepage instead, reducing information disclosure to scanners. AJAX, Cron, WP-CLI, and admin-post.php requests are never affected. Hide Author Sitemap – WordPress 5.5 added a built-in XML sitemap that includes a users file listing the author archive URL for every user with published posts — up to 2,000 usernames, publicly accessible. Removes the users entry from the sitemap index entirely (WP 5.5+, default ON). Remove X-Redirect-By Header – WordPress 5.1+ adds an X-Redirect-By: WordPress header on every redirect, openly advertising that the site runs WordPress. Removes it from all redirects (default ON). Hide PHP Version Header – PHP sends an X-Powered-By: PHP/x.x.x header on every response, exposing your exact PHP version to every visitor and scanner. Removes it from all responses (default ON). Generic PHP Error Messages – WordPress fatal error messages can include internal file paths and line numbers. Replaces them with a generic response that reveals nothing about server structure (default ON). Hide Admin Bar on Frontend – Removes the WordPress admin toolbar from the public-facing site for all logged-in users. Reduces frontend CSS/JS overhead for logged-in sessions (default OFF). Remove Dashboard Welcome Panel – Removes the “Welcome to WordPress” panel from the dashboard home screen for all users (default OFF). Remove Default Dashboard Widgets – Removes four default dashboard widgets including WordPress Events and News, which makes an outbound HTTP request to api.wordpress.org on every dashboard load (default OFF). Remove Admin Footer Text – Removes the “Thank you for creating with WordPress” text and WordPress version number from the wp-admin footer (default OFF). Disable REST Users Endpoint – WordPress’s REST API exposes /wp-json/wp/v2/users publicly, returning usernames and slugs for all users with published posts. Removes this endpoint for unauthenticated requests only — Gutenberg and plugins that need it while logged in are unaffected (default ON). Disable Email Change Notifications – WordPress sends emails to users when their email address or password changes. On agency-managed sites these are noise. Suppresses both notification types (default OFF). Disable Auto-Update Emails – WordPress emails after every automatic core, plugin (WP 5.5+), and theme (WP 5.5+) update. On sites where auto-updates are routine these arrive constantly (default OFF). Auto-Update Emails: Errors Only – A middle ground: suppresses core auto-update success emails only. Failure emails still arrive so you know when action is needed (default OFF). Skip Bundled Themes on Upgrade – Defines CORE_UPGRADE_SKIP_NEW_BUNDLED to stop WordPress installing a new default theme on every core upgrade. Existing themes are not affected (default OFF). Disable Site Health – Disables WordPress Site Health checks entirely. Site Health runs a 12-hour background cron job and makes REST API calls on every admin page load, fetching a list of ~20 WordPress.org API endpoints. On managed hosting with automated updates, these checks are redundant and add unnecessary server load (default OFF). WordPress 7.0 Off switches for the new subsystems WordPress 7.0 turns on by default. AI Support – WordPress 7.0 ships a built-in AI client framework that initialises on every request. Filters wp_supports_ai to false so the AI subsystem never bootstraps — no providers, no AI REST surface, no AI options on the Connectors page. Connectors Registry – WordPress 7.0 initialises a connector registry on every request, frontend included, registering the bundled Akismet connector and any AI providers. Skips registry initialisation entirely on sites that use no connectors. Core AI Abilities – Stops WordPress from registering its built-in AI abilities (site info, user info, and more) when the Abilities API registry is first used. Completes the AI off switch. Abilities REST API – Removes the wp-abilities/v1 REST namespace (list, categories, and run endpoints) that exposes server-side abilities to REST clients. Icons REST Endpoint – Removes the /wp/v2/icons endpoints that serve SVG icon data to the block editor icon picker. AI Connectors Page – Removes the Connectors submenu from Settings, hiding the AI provider configuration page. Admin View Transitions – Removes the CSS View Transitions stylesheet WordPress 7.0 enqueues on every wp-admin screen, restoring instant admin navigation. Command Palette – Removes the ⌘K / Ctrl+K command palette: the admin bar trigger button and the JS bundle enqueued on every wp-admin page. Block Editor Remote Block Patterns – WordPress fetches patterns from api.wordpress.org on every editor load. …